The road to Utopia is the road to Hell. — Communism and socialism are the opiates of the intelligentsia. — The left, in its eternal and futile quest for "equality", is more than willing to abolish liberty and sunder fraternity.

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Whoppers

You probably remember these whoppers from your teen-age years: “I promise I’ll cut the grass tomorrow if you’ll give me an advance on my allowance”; “We’re just going to the movies, and there’ll be lots of other kids there”; “I’ll always love you.”

Our wanna-be Presidents offer similar morsels:

It’s our turn to run the country.

We’ll cut the deficit/streamline the government/make the government more responsive to the people [pick any number].

It’s time to get this country moving again.

The only thing worse than failing to deliver on such promises would be to deliver on them. Let’s take them in turn.

1. Running the country. Who wants a bunch of Harvard history professors or Yale lawyers running the country? These are the people who brought us Vietnam, from which disaster the country still reels. And after barely averting the debacle of Hillary-Care, it seems that the Washington Wizards (that’s Congress, not the NBA team) may opt for creeping socialized medicine instead of swallowing it in one dose. Keep it up, guys and gals, and only the truly rich will be able to afford high-quality health care — by buying it on the black market.

2. Cutting the deficit, streamlining government, and making government more responsive to the people. Lord, save us from the unholy trinity of political panaceas. Right now, with an economy that’s healthy, no thanks to Bubba Bill and the Washington Wizards, the deficit is on the run. But you know what’s next: Let’s spend a little more here and there for the happiness of all of our favorite special-interest groups. Comes the inevitable economic slow-down and guess what will happen? Oops, we’ve made all of these commitments and can’t renege on them; guess we’ll have to raise taxes to fight the creeping deficit.

Of course, it takes more bureaucrats to collect higher taxes and to spend more money. So, forget streamlining because Washington without bureaucrats is like a hamburger without grease.

As for making government more responsive to the people: Why do you think we have deficits and bureaucratic bloat? Making government responsive to people, in practice, means satisfying special-interest groups at everyone’s expense.

3. Getting the country moving again. I guess you didn’t notice this on your way to the White House, Mr. President Du Jour, but the country moves better without your help, thank you. In fact, the administration of Herbert Hoover, abetted by Congress, caused the Great Depression; the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, again abetted by Congress, caused the Depression within the Great Depression. (You can look it up.)

Getting the country moving again really means moving the true believers in big government to Washington — and moving our money there, too, as quickly as possible.

* * *

Let’s get real, folks. Did you believe the whoppers you told as a teen-ager? Okay, you didn’t tell whoppers: Do you still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus? Well, then, why do you still believe they’re alive and well in Washington?

Comments & Correspondence

Now that this blog is in hiatus, I have closed comments on all posts. If you wish to communicate privately, you may e-mail me at the Germanic nickname for Friedrich followed by the last name of the great Austrian economist and Nobel laureate whose first name is Friedrich followed by the 3rd and 4th digits of his birth year followed by the usual typographic symbol followed by the domain and extension for Google’s e-mail service — all run together.

On Liberty and Libertarianism

What is liberty? It is peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

John Stuart Mill opined that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." But who determines whether an act is harmful or harmless? Acts deemed harmless by an individual are not harmless if they subvert the societal bonds of trust and self-restraint upon which liberty itself depends.

Which is not to say that all social regimes are regimes of liberty. Liberty requires voice -- the freedom to dissent -- and exit -- the freedom to choose one's neighbors and associates. Voice and exit depend, in turn, on the rule of law under a minimal state.

Liberty, because it is a social phenomenon and not an innate condition of humanity, must be won and preserved by an unflinching defense of a polity that fosters liberty through its norms, and the swift and certain administration of justice within that polity. The governments in and of the United States have long since ceased to foster liberty, but most Americans are captives in their own land and have no choice but to strive for the restoration of liberty, or something closer to it.

Who can restore liberty? Certainly not the self-proclaimed libertarians who are fixated on Mill's empty harm principle and align with the left on social norms. Traditional (i.e., Burkean) conservatism fosters the preservation and adherence of beneficial norms (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments). Thus, by necessity, the only true libertarianism is found in traditional conservatism. I am a traditional conservative, which makes me a libertarian -- a true one.

Notes about Usage

“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.

Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).

The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.

I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.

I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.

If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:

What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.

This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.